And in the End
by Windinthereeds
Summary: Jane was many years younger than Rochester. He would surely predecease her.The title was inspired by a song on the B side of Abbey Road, And in the end, the love we make...
1. Chapter 1

Barbados, 1899

"There are so many colors and varieties of the tropical flowers..." It was necessary, even in the bright sunlight that she put her face with the myopic eyes close to the drawing paper. Only then could she see the details of her work. This artist of renown, this most famous and faithful recorder of the flora of the West Indies did not want to disappoint. No one would ever say that the celebrated illustrator and naturalist Jane Rivers was past her prime or that her work was just not what it was.

Mrs. Rivers peered at the stamen in the center of her latest watercolor flower. The London Botany Society decided to call it The Trinidad Ginger. A touch more of darker amber? A dab of yellow? Did her efforts truly capture the depths of the smoldering honey shade of this newly cataloged plant?

The door opened to her small studio. A man in his late thirties or early forties, blond and sunburned walked into the room. He placed his Panama hat on the table, brushed the dust off his white suit and gave Jane a warm hug. "Mama, you look nineteen when you are painting!" Crispin, the true child of her heart entered the room. Something of the blood she shared with his father St. John had distilled in the now grown man a true memory of the elfin young Jane Eyre.

"My little fairy..." She heard a voice from long ago and far away. Strange, none of her brood of children by HIM, by her one true love were as entwined in her heart as this one charmed Crispin Rivers, born from someone she never truly loved.

"Mama" said Crispin, looking alarmed at her sudden distracted look. "Are you well?"

Jane reasserted herself to the present time. "I apologize my dear boy. It is the prerogative of the elderly to be lost in thought. I was thinking on my Trinidad ginger. Do you think that it has the correct dark yellow?"

Crispin took her frail arm and attempted to lead her to a chair. "Mama, please. The orchid societies and botanists can wait. You are still weak from last winter." Jane Rivers, months earlier, was rendered speechless and without feeling in left her side. It happened as she was reading a letter from England. James...

Slowly, over the months, Jane did regain her powers. But there lingered in her aspect a hint of frailty—a hesitancy that was never in the demeanor of the brisk and no-nonsense Jane Rivers. Crispin Rivers saw the change and, also observed that his mother sometimes had a far away look---an abstracted other-worldly look. Once he observed her sitting alone on the veranda, smiling and mouthing conversations and pouring tea and even reading poetry for an invisible guest named Edward Rochester. Edward had been dead for forty years. 

It frightened Crispin. 

Jane Rivers patted Crispin's hand. "I am here for a while, my dear. My work is not complete. I have something to do."

Jane smiled. Crispin, the Botany Society and the New York City's Harper Magazine, of course, thought that she was thinking of her deadlines, the boat that was leaving the harbor and her endless trips into the wilds of the island. Jane was thinking of something else.

"Crispin, did your father see you?"

Crispin laughed. "Dear Papa, and I say that with all irony, is seated in a broken wicker chaise on the veranda. Isabelle is patiently and lovingly attending him, even as he calls her 'Whore of Babylon' or some such endearments. Isa just smiles and wipes his brow and gives him some water."

Jane and Crispin exchanged a silent smile. They wondered to themselves if the old Reverend Rivers knew that the dark and smiling Isabelle was in truth his and Jane's own granddaughter. And, did the old ranter know that Isabelle had three sisters who shared Crispin as their father?

Jane finally spoke. "Crispin, you know that I also deplored your free ways with our servants. But, I must tell you that I am reconciled. Isabelle is a blessing to us."

The Reverend St. John Eyre now lived in his own world—a world inhabited by his own fevered imaginings of Hellfire, demons, and threats of eternal damnation.

"Really mother, how could you have even considered cohabitation with such a man..." Crispin started to say.

Mother and son looked at one another, shook their heads and began to laugh out loud. "Really Crispin, how would I have been able to have my delightful companion Crispin in my old age if I had not? Tea, my son?"

Crispin led his mother to the small table with the alcohol lamp. She did have a well equipped kitchen in the main house. But, Jane preferred to have her tea in the snug corner of her artist's studio. The plain heavy (and a little chipped) mugs, the old brown teapot were her memories of another studio, another time... and Edward.

Crispin Rivers finally spoke again. "I have returned from England, mother. My business took me to north of Nottingham."

Jane continued to be over concentrated on the effort of making tea. "Isabelle made some ginger biscuits yesterday. I have them somewhere, they are quite extraordinary." She spoke blandly, as if she did not hear what her son was saying.

Crispin continued "Mother, listen to me. I went to Ferndean."

Jane continued unhindered "They will be bringing the Reverend in quite soon. It would be best for you to be out of sight, you know how angry you make St. John, although I would not take his ravings to heart...I do believe that ranting about the eternal fire of damnation for you is his only comfort in his senility" .

"Mother, PLEASE" Crispin stopped her fussing about the tea articles. "Mother, I spoke with Richard. He has sold some land. Ferndean is no longer surrounded by forest."

"Indian or Chinese?" asked Jane as she reached for the tea containers.

"Mother, you are now a great-grandmother. Helen's oldest had a boy. His name is Erik Fredrikson. They live in a place called Wisconsin."

"I am tired Crispin. Please take some tea. I need to rest."


	2. Chapter 2

Fin de seicle

Jane Rivers was alone again. The Trinidad Ginger painting was finished. She would post it to her New York publisher and the London Botany and Orchid Clubs in the morning. A small fortune sat in the bank of England under her name and her name alone from her many triumphs as an artist. A book was being compiled titled "The Flora and Fauna of Spanish Town" illustrated by the "Celebrated Mrs. Reverend St. John Rivers". Her London and New York agents were enthusiastic about the proofs that were ready to be admitted to the press. All that was needed was the last painting of the ginger.

Would this book even be available in that place called Wisconsin? She heard that the land was inhabited by wild Indians, impoverished ex-patriot Cornish miners, lumberjacks and recent immigrants from Norway. Crispin told her that Wisconsin, in many ways, resembled England with green rolling hills, gentle forests and green meadows. The soil was rich, the large cities like Milwaukee had some culture and even had creditable universites. Helen and her husband homesteaded a farm west of the capital, Madison and purchased other valuable lands. Their children were prospering. It was only that the winters were harsher and the summers were more hot and humid than England. To Jane, it more accurately described Russia. She looked at the place called "Wisconsin" in the atlas and on the globe in the mission school room.

Helen may have well emigrated to the moon and married the man in the moon. All letters Jane sent to her over the many years were either returned or passed into oblivion. Helen refused to see Crispin when he traveled to Wisconsin ten years before. Now, Helen was gone from this earth, like James, little Edward and the two babies in the Thornfield Churchyard. And, her only love...

Helen's anger at her mother's remarriage took her far away. And now, a baby named Erik?

"Why Jane, we have towheaded Norseman ! A little Viking!" Jane froze, started by the voice. HE was talking to her again. She was not surprised, upon turning around, to see Edward sitting at his ease, wearing an old fashioned cravat with an ebony walking stick across his knee. But, he had both eyes, and both hands! How could this be? The special smile, the one just for her, spread from Edward's mouth to the eyes, just as it did all those years ago at Thornfield Hall.

"Oh Edward, you must know that you are dreadfully out of fashion. I could no more wear a leghorn bonnet than you can parade in that cravat." Jane turned again, and the chair was empty.

He was gone. Jane was ever one to busy herself and think in the present. "It is" she sighed. "Ah Edward, it is." She spoke to the empty room.

Jane walked slowly to a cupboard and took out an old leather portfolio. This was a collection so very different from the neatly outlined flowers so prized by the London Botany clubs. The oils and watercolor depicted a sea and a beach of many colors, made wild by an oncoming storm. The water was every shade of green and blue and black with the suggestion of an eye in the darkening clouds. Jane looked at the sky with her critical artist's eye. It needed revising---somehow the colors were just not LURID enough to capture the storms she and Edward watched on Minorca so many years ago.

"Yes, I do have something to do." Said Jane to herself and to the room.

Later in the evening, she applied a fixative to the new colors. On the back of the painting she wrote, "To Erik, from his oldest granny". Jane stepped back and viewed her efforts with satisfaction. "There, this will do nicely" she said.

"Ever my practical little witch, are you not." Oh God, that voice, HE was here again. Did it mean that they would be together again soon?

"You really must not surprise me in that way, Edward." She was sharp, but her voice was now that of a young woman, trying to be a proper young wife as she smothered laughter. "I am merely trying to provide some sort of a legacy to our great-grandchild."

The last thing she heard was his booming laughter as Edward reached out with his restored hand and said, "Let's go home, Janet."


End file.
